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Look! In the sky! The Finn Signal
The Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival is coming this weekend to the greater Palo metropolitan area on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Related posts: No related posts.
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Laskiainen is coming
Here’s a story from the Mesabi Daily News about an author’s event at the Laskiainen Sliding Festival in Palo (on the East Range). Laskiainen is in its 72nd year on the Iron Range and features classic winter sliding and ethnic foods with a special emphasis on the Finns. Unfortunately I couldn’t do the book event…
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India and the Iron Range: the start of a beautiful friendship?
In the early days of the Iron Range immigrants from more than 50 countries came to area for mining, logging and support industries. India was not then among those countries. This past week India took center stage for a special regional conference and cultural program called “Focus on India” at Hibbing Community College. This comes…
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An opportunity for the Iron Range?
As I tour the Iron Range for my new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” one of the topics audiences and I keep revisiting is the boundary of the Iron Range. Where does it end and where does it begin? I argue in the book that Iron Ranger status is part genealogical and…
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What we is and what we isn’t
One of my favorite things about Iron Range culture is my people’s willful obliviousness to how we’re perceived by outsiders. Most just don’t care. The ones that do operate off entirely different social cues, the same cues held by nerdy teenagers who think they’re cool. On a good day I straddle the line between these…
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Culture wars
After watching Wednesday night’s Republican convention, I realize that our disagreements in this country are much more over personality and culture than they are political. Sure, there are plenty of political disagreements. But Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s VP, her speech and the speeches that led up to it were not overt arguments for…
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Please don’t talk about your children on your phone in the men’s room stall
I’ve seen this one other time in my life but this time seemed more disturbing. I went in the men’s room and heard a guy talking. This is rare in itself. Men usually have a code of silence in public bathrooms. (Note that the Sen. Craig scandal, sordid as it may have been, did not…
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Chain of Command opens Thursday, Oct. 25 for two weekends
My friend Mike Ricci, director of the Hibbing Community College Theatre, is opening an original show this week. You should always come to Hibbing to see Mike’s shows, but this one especially. A Minneapolis playwright worked with Mike and his cast to write an original play speaking to the human element of the Iraq war.…